I agree. I want the highest possible screen. Wide screens appear to be catering to movies, games, and the dishonesty of diagonal measurements (a wide screen gets a greater diagonal measurement than a square screen with the same number of pixels). Documents are best viewed with vertical space.

If you want (or need) a fast scan rate, it appears that that is a limitation in desktop monitors as well. It seem as though the market is catering to folks who'd rather watch some Netflix than get back to work.

That's probably because with desktop PCs the average home user could now have three or four computers in the household for the family members, and since big TVs with that aspect ratio and resolution, the control boards may well be identical in big and small units, and the biggest monitors are also often the smallest TVs.

Compared to a business user, where the average user has one computer at work to use.

My wife at her work had her second monitor rotated to Portrait mode, and it's great for displaying d

My wife at her work had her second monitor rotated to Portrait mode, and it's great for displaying docs, she gets a full page at at time. I had done that to my computer at home, but the video driver did funny things to motion video, so I ended up giving up on that experiment.

That's what I have for my setup at work. Luckily I have a wall instead of a cubicle, so I could drill through the monitor base and secure it.

My biggest problem was closing the lid before ejecting the laptop caused problems with screen resolution with no rhyme or reason, sometimes at home, sometimes when I got back to work the next day. Ejecting before closing the lid seems to have solved the problem. But no amount of tinkering with the stupid Windows 7 features would fix it.

I have two monitors at work, one large widescreen (from the model number on the front, it's 23") and a normal 4:3 monitor, rotated to vertical.

I haven't had any problems with graphic drivers or wallpapers, KDE handles it nicely. The viewing angle could be better, although the screen's stand rotates the screen itself isn't really designed for sideways viewing.

My wallpaper for the vertical screen is some 16th and 17th century scans from botany and zoology books, which I found on Wikipedia.

RGBG Pentile displays generally suck at low resolutions, but IMHO would probably be a reasonable way to get 2560x1600 16:10 resolution on a 12-14" display. At that point, the pixel density is so high, the display's physical resolution almost ceases to matter, and you can just scale your fonts as you please & treat it as a virtual 1280x800 display with zero artifacts if you like, even with a terrible scaling algorithm.

IMHO, 13.3" widescreen is the golden size for a laptop... wide enough for a full keyboard, but small enough to be usable on a plane.

Speaking of the keyboard... put the cursor keys on a T island at the lower right, with delete to the immediate right (but separated by some open space) of Backspace, make 'insert' Fn+Delete (let's be honest... does anyone actually use Insert for anything besides accidental annoyance), then fill the remaining space between Delete and the cursor keys with home, end, pgUp, and pgDn (pgUp and PgDn slightly above the cursor keys, home and end separated from both delete and PgUp/PgDn by open space. Give it two Trackpoint sticks -- one between GHB, one aligned vertically with GHB below the spacebar... both independent (one for mouse movement, one for vertical scrolling and panning). Finally, build the keyboard with low-profile keycaps above Cherry mechanical switches that are sculpted to account for the laptop's rear being angled up by tilt-out feet. I remember a few laptops from the late 80s that had mechanical-switch keyboards, and most of them actually feel better than the crap keyboards that ship with most DESKTOP PCs today.

Oh, and build a real powered USB hub into the power supply. Not just for 5v power, but a real USB hub. And make an optional second display with the same panel that latches onto the rear of the laptop's own display for storage and transportation. On a plane? latched on & stowed. Anywhere else? Unlatch, fold out the legs, pull out the USB cord, and plug it into a port on the power supply to enjoy a second display. Maybe even make a third super-deluxe model that has a second panel hinged with the main panel, so that if you're on a plane you could unlatch the external (now third) display, put it somewhre safe, then tilt up the second screen so you have a pair of 2560x1600 screens. The third display would protect the second when clamped onto it for travel.

I agree that we don't need two windows (I got one) and two ctrl keys (I wonder if I ever touched the right one), but some international keyboard layouts use the right Alt to compose extra characters. Example: the Italian keyboard [wikipedia.org] doesn't have keys for square and curly braces. There is è and + in those positions (shifted to é and *). So we type right-ALT è to get [ and right-ALT + to get ]. We add shift to the combo to get { and }. Obviously that tradeoff is fine because most people just write

My work maintains several high end graphics workstations, a few of which have sets of four monitors linked together as a single screen (on a mounting frame to keep them in place) - the down side to this is that large windows are interrupted by the monitor's edges between screens.
For really tall stuff, xrandr can be used to rotate the screen though, so you can work productively on multiple monitors, and use tall (document-shaped!) windows without putting up with the bars in the middle. For quite a while,

I have no problem with widescreen if there's a decent resolution. It makes putting two pages of document up (or two documents up) easier. I'm pretty satisfied with battery life, speed, and so on, but the screen resolutions seem stuck. I'm hoping that we'll see a good step up from 1920 resolutions this year when the Haswell notebooks arrive.

The problem with high resolution displays is that they use a lot of power. The retina MacBooks have 96Wh batteries to get good life and so are very heavy. For comparison similar laptops have around 45Wh batttery packs for a similar run time.

For now I'd rather have a 1600x900 screen. Less power so the laptop is much lighter, and a higher effective resolution compared to a "retina" display running at 200% zoom. Give it a few years until higher resolution and lower power consumption is available and I'll take

We need at least 1200 vertical pixels, this was readily available 10 years ago, but now is hard to find. We really should be getting much more, rather than much less, so we can read portrait mode documents, etc.

Both in terms of glare reduction/brightness and decent resolution. As far as I know, a laptop is stuck with the screen it comes with and there are no easy workarounds that are intended to be portable.

The screen in particular because much of the other stuff on the poll is ridiculously easy to fix or workaround, even on existing hardware. This is because you can get spare batteries (or just use the adapter) and exernalize file storage, and things like half-decent wireless computer mice are ridiculously cheap.

I still don't get the mirror display thing - are they cheaper or something? I don't believe that anyone would actually decide that "yes! the one where what you see is a) your face and, distant-second, b) whatever you're trying to work on, is the way to go!"

Am I missing something? The only matte displays I can find anymore are Lenovo T-series and a few specific Dells. It's just weird.

If you tweak the angle so that the bright spot is no longer on the screen, the light source has little to no effect on the picture.

Which, more often than not, means that you have to fold the laptop completely and be done with it. In broad sunshine a washed-out matte screen is definitely more readable than an equivalent glossy screen that is reduced to a perfect mirror.

Glossy screens are completely crap. Their sole purpose of existence is to look nice in the shop to attract "oh-shiny!"-users.

YMMV is indeed true. I find I don't have a problem so much with the black level causing eye strain, but those moments when the screen is very dark and my eyes automatically focus to twice the the focal length to see my own reflection, and then back again when the screen brightens up, that really tires my eyes out. Must have a word with my boss about that, this reflective iMac screen has got to go...

I would also argue that there is a certain amount of marketing bias behind the majority of laptop screens bein

Agreed. I have an external panel permanently plugged in. Yes, it's a 16:10, but there again it is set vertically so I get 900x1440 (hey, I'm cheap) hence have something I can use for document editing... it was either that or fall back to ol' reliable Fujitsu tablet at 768x1024, but that's only a 500 Celeron with 256MB RAM and Windows ME...

Most content-based programs are not designed for less than 1024 pixels of horizontal resolution, so you're condemned to do a lot of horizontal scrolling. Or making all your content tiny.

Even worse, most laptop screens are TFT displays built to be seen from a slightly downward angle. If you look at it any other way, there will be color shifts. In particular, if you look at it sideways, then each eye will see a different color and your visual cortex gets to have fun seeing different t

I agree. Usually, to code, I reduce the resolution to ~1152x768 to please my eyes...

This is a joke, right? You realize that Windows has had DPI scaling functions for years? (And even if you're using an OS without DPI scaling, you'll get much better results by increasing the font size in your code editor rather than running the panel out of spec.)

I really must be in the minority on this, but I've never had a problem with lower pixel density. As long as the pixels are small enough to assemble into a legible font at the size I can comfortably read, I'm happy.

One you get used to the idea that you can simultaneously display multiple source code windows, documentation pages, debuggers and other IDE components on a huge monitor, it's difficult to go back to something as cramped as 1366*768.

After using a Samsung Chromebook for my casual evening browsing habits for a few months I find myself loving the light weight. A 3 pound laptop is something I can keep in my lap all evening comfortably, without wishing I had a desk to throw the thing on to give my legs a break.

The #1 most important thing I consider when purchasing a laptop is that it doesn't come bundled with Windows. Luckily these days there are numerous options to purchase from vendors that bundle Linux, if you aren't interested in a Mac. But when I hear "typical" I think Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc. While these vendors sometimes have non-Windows offerings available, it would be nice if this extended to their entire product line. Personally, I would and have paid more for laptops that come without OS.

That was pretty stupid. When you can just stick a (your favorite distribution) dvd in your laptop and install it before you even see the os it came with.

You are missing two important points.

The large number of computers sold with Windows is the primary reason for so much hardware and software only supporting Windows, and that is a hindrance for adoption of open source operating systems, even when they are better suited for the task than Windows. Obviously this Anonymous Coward would like that to end. Eve

the hardware/code can be proprietary that the manufacturer doesn't want to share

That is entirely a matter of attitude. A shift in the balance among operating systems can change that attitude. Why do you say it is stupid to spend money trying to change an attitude, you do not like?

the code can contain licensed stuff that the the manufacturer cannot share

If that is true, then agreeing to those license terms in the first place was gambling your business on a guess about the development of a different market th

given that my systems are all prone to memory fragmentation because I actually use them rather than seal them inside a drywall, I have to reboot at least every nine days, and more often if I'm doing a lot of video work.

Memory fragmentation was an issue in the early 90's. Nowadays laptops are equipped with CPUs with a builitin MMU and are running an OS that won't work without MMU. On such an architecture memory fragmentation is not a problem.

touch screens! I mean, come on! If I want a touch screen these days I am either stuck with something with 64GB user storage (I mean, that's a TINY portion of my music collection, and fuck all room for other such niceties as being able to stretch my mixing arms!) or I'm paying double the odds on other specifications (500GB hard drive and 6GB RAM is fine for most things, as is a 15" short screen). I can't help but feel just a little bit ripped off.

What are you talking about? Is this a post from 2007? Have you been to best buy or staples recently? Every manufacturer has a touch screen laptop (well, almost, Apple hasn't "invented" it yet.). Not only that, you can even get desktops that have touch screens.

Not soldering everything together would get my vote. The option to include a discrete graphics card or better processor at some point after purchase would be very welcome. I have a desktop I keep up to date and use a broken down second hand dell for any work that requires mobility (meetings, class etc) because I see no point in investing in a piece of kit I can't improve later on.

I maintain a stack of Dell Latitudes and Inspirons for precisely that reason - for the most part, their components are completely interchangeable. The lowest spec machines find homes on my walls as digital picture frames (currently 4 Pentium IIs), the high spec gear (we're only talking 2.0, 1.8, 1.6 and 1.2 P4's) gets various uses from clustering to field work.

By far the biggest bottleneck is battery life not just for laptops but for civilization in general. My Lenovo X230 is fast, light, has decent resolution and is perfect for my job. The biggest problem is battery life, I'm good for 4-5 hours but this number drops every time I go through a discharge/recharge cycle and eventually end up with 20 minutes of battery life. Industry is focused on developing lower-power hardware to extend battery life but we really need a revolution in battery power storage and re-usability.

A stylish wearable using 'cloud' functionality for processsing and storage, with haptic and voice input, and visual / voice output with beyond retina image quality that is projected into both eyes in a maskable area while using optical comparison to detect the ability of my eye to see it (avoiding bifocals, etc..) and projecting what Is actually in front of me based on eye position so I don't fall on my butt.

It is really hard for me to find a decent laptop because it is so rare that they come with a GPU worth using. My current laptop is using hybrid crossfire between an AMD A8 with a 6620G a dedicated 6750M. I got it about a year ago and I can't find anything comparable on the market today. HP doesn't make them anymore, nor anything like them. It is even getting harder and harder to find a laptop with an APU or worth while dedicated card.

Maybe not everyone has the same experience, but I like my current laptop (2009 MacBook Pro) just fine. As a computer service manager, the two things I'd LIKE to see are improved resistance to accidental liquid damage, and better service access. Neither is likely to happen; in the last few years I've no improvement in the former and a dramatic decrease in the latter. Current models are essentially unrepairable.

I'm typing this on a 1920x1080 laptop screen (17") with another 22" monitor of the same resolution plugged in. These are considered "high-end" for a laptop, and "mainstream" for a monitor.

Sometime this month Samsung is launching a *phone* with that resolution. In a 5" screen. It's commonplace for tablets, enough that the higher-end ones go even higher. And yet laptop manufacturers can't seem to make a 15" screen above 1366x768, judging by most of them.

I remember having a 1024x768 screen back in 1997. Do you seriously mean to tell me we haven't been able to improve monitors beside making them thinner and adding more pixels to the sides?

* I am of the opinion that 16:10 is a superior resolution to 16:9. It works fine for editing, both full-screen and two side-by-side apps. It works fine for gaming. It plays 16:9 movies with minimal fuss. And it even works fairly well in portrait mode, though not as well as 3:4. If it weren't for the fact that it's usually 50% more expensive for a 10% increase in size, I'd use them exclusively.

I realize with the really high pixel densities, you basically have to double the size of everything, but you get more readable fonts and a generally nicer look (also, less jaggies in games and whatnot). But I also want to be able to fit more stuff onto the screen at one time.

Jaggies, bragging rights, and the the magic word "1080p" is why cell phones have been getting more resolution latelyBut given the strange popularity of "full frame" modes in real operating systems, I'm not sure that "real estate" is of concern to OS developers.

Create some better method to control the volume than by bashing Fn+Fx. Old laptops were so nice to have the analogue volume wheel. Maybe create something similar in digital by putting a "mouse scroll wheel" to the side of the laptop?

Id like to see a standard motherboard that can be swapped when a new version comes out, upgrade-able CPU's, upgrade-able GPU's, upgrade-able memory, upgrade-able power supplies, upgrade-able batteries and so on. If i can have a PC case that can accommodate all this why cant there be a laptop that can do the same?

Laptop OEMs have been fighting this kind of thing for years because it eats into their bottom line. Apple seems to be the worst offender: Their "Retina" MacBook Pros offer locked multipliers, no mini-pcie bays, a proprietary flash storage interface and non-upgradable memory. Unfortunately, it's "in" to be like Apple and other OEMs are starting to follow suit.

Make it a desktop with a handle on top and a case for the LCD, lol. Until then, I probably won't be real happy. I hate the battery life, hate the weight, hate the fragility, hate the difficulty to clean it and difficulty to upgrade, hate the lack of SSDs in low end models, hate the screen visiblity outdoors, hate the low quality webcam, hate the mic facing directly into the speakers, hate the keyboards, absolutely hate with a passion the touchpad, hate the half speed DVD drive, hate the slower than desktop chip speed, hate the insufficient cooling on almost all models, and hate the fact that all new ones come with Windows 8.

I'd like to be able to use my tablet/phone/e-reader/whatever as external displays. I'd like to be able to whip out a small device like a cell phone, do some browsing, and then decide-- hey, I need a screen and keyboard to continue my work-- and switch terminals. I'd like to be able think of your devices as constituent parts of your my own network, and not as discrete computers.

It really depends on your use case. Since the question was what I would change, my answer is nothing at all. I've probably had more than 20 "portables" over the years ranging from a suitcase-sized NEC with a gas plasma display to a Toshiba smaller than modern-day tablets. But the Apple Air (13") I have right now is completely perfect for what I want it for. Weighs almost nothing, has a wonderful display, the 128GB SSD is lots as I store most of my data in the cloud, battery life is pretty much all day l

Because aside from RAM and hard drive, there are none. Imagine if you could buy one battery or A/C adapter that was compatible with every laptop manufactured over the past three years? Imagine if you could replace a broken screen with another one for less than $100.00? Imagine if you could upgrade the processor, or swap out the motherboard for one that had a better/faster GPU? To be honest, I'm surprised nobody else has suggested this yet.

I bought my current laptop because it shipped with Ubuntu. I actually run Lubuntu (which I can't brag about enough), but it virtually guaranteed that I wouldn't have video compatibility issues. My last laptop (from the same manufacturer) had an ATI card that I could never get to perform well (with at least three different distros).

IIRC most Intel-based laptops are compatible -- the 4+ laptops I've tried on various distros have all done fine, though KDE 4 reports they're unable to blur the background on transparent windows/decorations. (To be fair, the ATI Radeon HD 4225 netbook I used for a while didn't give me trouble, either.)

You might also give your system a try under non-Ubuntu distros like SimplyMepis (my favorite), OpenSUSE, or Fedora. I've heard of a lot of people that ran into hardware compatibility issues under Ubuntu-base

I understand the convenience of a Laptop and at it's core it is very functional, but in my vision of the world, a laptop is an extension of the paradigm of tethering people.

Before you bitch at me for this, read me out. This thought line is from a work perspective. When companies started sending people home with pagers and putting people on-call 24/7, they were being paid extra for going above and beyond. But companies saw a way to sell extra hours to the work force through "convenience".
Pager: You can just call the number (sometimes work) if you receive a page and help resolve an issue with a quick discussion rather than drive into work and get overtime pay.
Cell Phone: Can page you and you can be anywhere when you call the number back, or can be called directly, again quick discussion rather than drive into work and get overtime pay.
Laptops: Once you have a reason to, you can quickly connect with work and fix an issue and not have to drive into work and get overtime pay, and you can conveniently work from home if you need to for an emergency.
Smart Phones: You can work and talk at the same time and improve the amount feedback, oh and it's small so you can take it with you where ever you go.

Each of these devices over time have become more and more invasive on the personal / private time away from work. Work has tethered you and you are their lap-dog all in the name of convenience.

Then when people used the convenience to benefit themselves, companies generally say, oh no, you are abusing the convenience.....

So I detest the Laptops because I see it as a long line of convenience tools that just tether you more.

When the end of the work day comes, I put the laptop away secured at work and walk away. My time away from work is my time away from technology and I try to enjoy the rest of the world.

Yes, I can always turn off the phone, or close the laptop, but there is nothing better than hearing, "we couldn't reach you" for true freedom.

Current hardware is amazing, but we've become so inured to bad software (chose any definition of "bad" you like, slow, bloated, buggy, insecure, incompatible, leaky...except perhaps "ugly" which we're doing Ok on) that so far no one else has even mentioned it. Until we start addressing that, better hardware will just lower the bar on the next round of software.

Battery life is fine for both. I get at least 8 hours on my laptop, and my Android smartphone goes for two days. So unless you're talking upgrading to weeks between charges, or battery systems that can still hold working charges even though they are years old, I don't see battery life as being a big issue. Now, a daylight readable screen for both (especially for the phone) would be worth switching for.

My laptop is currently idling at 40C, and hits maybe 70C under gaming load (that's with an i7 and a 660M, a combined TDP of 95W). I've never actually put it under a synthetic "full load". But it keeps the temps low by being an absolutely *massive* system. Weighs about four or five kg (that's "ten pounds", my fellow Americans). Or in/. terms, about a third the weight of the old IBM Portable PC, and about 20% less than the PC Convertible.

- instant on- six WEEKS battery life, using COTS (AA) batteries! You can leave it on 24/7 and still get over a week!- DOS command interpreter- built-in apps including BASIC interpreter and word processor- 80 column built-in screen with locking tilt as an option- built in 300 baud modem- flash storage built in, optional microdrive/microcassette bay (works with 1.8" drives shucked from USB pods! I shit ye not! I have mine working with a 4GB drive (although I can only access a 32MB partition, boo!))- full travel keyboard

If you want something a little more... useful... the Atari Portfolio might be right up your street; it's (apparently) fully MS-DOS compatible, it's smaller (about the size of a VHS cassette when closed, or about half the size of a netbook) though it did suffer the problem of short battery life.

You'd rather have a 16:10 (or 8:5 if you prefer) display and 1680x1050 than a 16:9 display at 1920x1080? Really? You'd willfully sacrafice a small amount of vertical resolution and a considerable amount of horizontal resolution just to avoid a display "optimized for media consuption"?

You, sir or madame, are an idiot. I'd really like to see higher resolutions in laptops, but I'm perfectly fine with wide aspect ratios. More vertical pixels would be nice, too, but I already have moved most things that use of s